mmmPop

Upper Deck

2009-10-12T13:19:00.007+01:00

After much delay, both tragic and comic, I'll be flying back to the UK this Wednesday.

I'm feeling terrified coz I'll be entering the final year of my PhD, reputed to be the most depressing of all stages. Bob says that he's been losing weight and feeling sick all the time as he writes up. I'm scared that I'd cope by bingeing on assorted sweets as I crap out 1000 words/day, which is my personal goal for my writing.

But a part of me is also very excited for the travel and the adventure and the fall/winter clothes I've been dying to wear (I supermiss wearing scarves). And I'm thrilled coz I'm flying on the new A380 of Singapore Air. And on the second floor too! With all the bookings and rebookings I had to do, I must say that Singapore Air has totally amazing customer service, with the most accommodating and respectful service agents I've ever encountered. I don't think I'll be using my Marco Polo anymore; it's Kris Flyer from here on out.

Goodbye for now, Manila.

Ms California Reconsidered

2009-05-03T16:49:00.004+01:00

What might be the deeper significance of Ms California's use of "opposite marriage" rather than "heterosexual marriage"? Might she have a more progressive politics than we had initially thought? This thoughtful vlogger reconsiders our favorite runner-up's answer.

Oh the fun of readings, misreadings, and rereadings. Always look for what's not being said!

(Thanks to B for the link)

Perfection is Zefron

2009-05-02T17:04:00.001+01:00

Just when I thought Zac couldn't get any prettier, we get this swoontastic photograph:

Though it must be said that Rey and I are a bit concerned with his body. Overly muscled on a small frame, our boy Zac needs to get a little beefier lest he run the risk of looking like those weirdly developed gymnasts and bodybuilders.

New GQ with Zefron out now!

Let's Give a Beautiful Bride-to-Be the Right to Choos!

2009-03-26T11:22:00.001Z

Friends, students, former lovers of our dear Nicole, this is our moral imperative! Jimmy Choo wedding shoes or bust!

Chinese Olympic Gymnasts 'Like Robots', says FIG President

2009-03-06T04:12:00.002Z

Talk about racist! Orientalism lives on!!! Clearly, 'these Asians' are robots as they're naturally good with sewing machines and mathematics and manufacturing Nike shoes! Grr!

Sorry, Mr Grandi. I've never seen robots move as gracefully and photograph so well like these:

Compared to craptastic Romanian gymnastics (of recent years, at least):

---
3 March 2009
Grandi: Chinese Olympic Gymnasts 'Robots'
From International Gymnast Online

FIG President Bruno Grandi criticized the Chinese gymnastics team and said there was "strong circumstantial evidence" of age falsification at the 2008 Olympic Games.

In an interview with German gymnastics magazine "Leon," Grandi said the members of the gold medal-winnning Chinese team in Beijing lacked aesthetic elegance.

"The Chinese gymnasts were robots," he said. "From a geometrical point of view the moves were very well done, but compare with the way [Nastia] Liukin performs a single movement with artistry. You can see how she continues to move through to the end point. The other is a perfect geometric figure. But a Code [of Points] will never be able to completely reflect aesthetic moment."

In Beijing, the Chinese women took its first ever Olympic gold medal in the team competition. He Kexin won the gold on uneven bars, and Yang Yilin won the bronze medal in the all-around and on uneven bars. Veteran Cheng Fei won bronze medals on vault and balance beam.

Grandi said it was conceivable that China had cheated in Beijing, alluding to the accusations that He and Yang were under the minimum age of 16.

"There was strong circumstantial evidence, certainly, but these investigations are not my job," said Grandi, in his fourth term as president of the International Gymnastics Federation. "I'm not the police or Interpol. If I find that there was cheating, then I can act."

After the Olympics concluded, the International Olympic Committee called for an independent investigation into China's six female artistic gymnasts and sought documentation of their birthdates. The IOC cleared the Chinese team after finding no evidence of age falsification.

"I had everything sent to the IOC and the IOC has carried out its investigations and the figures were the same," Grandi said. "The IOC gave us its findings, and we checked them and there was nothing. When people on the Internet find fake documents, you need to legally prove that these are fake, and that's not my job. I have to respect the documents that the Chinese government gives me. What else should I do - declare war on China?"

Resonance

2009-03-01T11:27:00.001Z

I was reading Ben Okri's Booker Prize-winning yarn In Arcadia (2002), when I had to stop to reread and reread a passage that so thoroughly struck me:

"If you believe in something, your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naivete will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means that you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, till only the skeleton of your dream is left...

The world--which is to say the powers that be--would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn't believe in it at all.

That's the world. Take it from me."

It struck me because I can relate to it, having experienced recent loss and disappointment myself. And it struck me because it's a reminder of a world as it shouldn't be, of a world as it shouldn't seem. To me, or to anyone.

No, Mr Narrator. That is not how it is. Existential moping is so 1999.

I always find it special when our media, while pushing us outwards, taking us to new places and surprising us with the unfamiliar, can just as quickly shift trajectory and draw us back inwards, holding up a mirror and asking us how we see ourselves. Our media are part of our very own 'working through', as we confront our fears (just as my tarrying with In Arcadia) and affirm our longings (just as I silently applauded Isla Fisher's testimonial in Confessions of a Shopaholic).

So when was the last time you were struck by a film, or a book, or a play, and why? :)

ICA Media Ethics Conference

2009-02-25T03:30:00.000Z

Geekgasmic! And not just because I'm in it! :)

---
Media Ethics Preconference

Sponsored by the ICA Philosophy of Communication Division. Cosponsored by the ICA Journalism Studies and Mass Communication Divisions, and by New York University’s Department of Culture and Communication and the Council for Media and Culture

Thursday, May 21, 8:30 – 17:00

The preconference will bring together communication scholars, media theorists, journalists, and practitioners to collectively consider the question of media ethics. Ethics has recently emerged as a central concern in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in various subsets of media and communication studies. An increasing number of scholars are now involved in issues directly pertaining to the relation of media and ethics while drawing on various philosophical traditions. While ethical issues have accompanied the development of media studies from its inception and, agreement on a broad conceptual framework for media ethics is still to be established and a broad dialogue between theoretical perspectives on ethics and contemporary media practitioners yet to be achieved. The preconference will provide a platform for such an attempt.

8:30-9:00 Breakfast and registration

9:00-10:30 Opening plenary: Perspectives on Media Ethics: Ronald Arnett, Lilie Chouliaraki, Clifford Christians

10:30-10:45 Coffee Break

10:45-12:00 SESSION 1: Media and Morality
• ‘Local Cosmopolitanism’: Media Ethics for Diasporic Youth – Ingrid Volkmer & Esther Chin
• Political Discourse Cultures and Transcultural Media Ethics: Media and Morality in European Political Communication – Andreas Hepp, Michael Brüggemann, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, Swantje Lingenberg & Johanna Möller
• The New Visibility of Body Horror on the Internet: Ethical Stakes and Implications – Kari Andén Papadopoulos
• Children Watching Children: How Filipino Children Represent and Receive News Images of Suffering – Jonathan Corpus Ong

10:45-12:00 SESSION 2: Accountability
• Distinct Responsibilities: Why the Responsibility of Media and Journalism Isn’t the Same – Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen
• Metacoverage as an Accountability System? A Framing Model of Election News – Paul D’Angelo & Frank Esser
• Covering the Duke Lacrosse Case: Professional Perspectives on Journalism Ethics – Glen Feighery
• Arguing for Accountability: Toward a Cross-Cultural Discourse Ethics – Steven F. Rafferty

12:00-13:15 SESSION 3: Audience Involvement and Participation
• Structural and Individual Horizons in Politics of Pity: Mediatised Advocacy for Asylum Seekers – Karina Horsti
• Politics of Disrespect, Ethics of Care: Towards a Normative Framework of Mediated Multiculturalism? – Mirca Madianou
• Emotional Ethics: Media Ethics Through the Lens of Critical Emotion Studies – Brent Malin
• Media Ethics as Field Strategies: What Do Audiences Do With Ethics? – Tim Markham

12:00-13:15 SESSION 4: Objectivity, Truth, Rationality
• A Definition of Journalistic Objectivity as a Performance – Sandrine Boudana
• Narrative Virtue in Times of Moral Uncertainty – Nick Couldry
• Objectivity and Truth: Anatomy of an Endless Misunderstanding – Juan Ramón Muñoz-Tores
• Rituals of Rationality? Lessons from the Mohammed Cartoons Affair – Risto Kunelius

13:15-14:15 Lunch Break

14:15-15:40 SESSION 5: Media, Event, Otherness
• Badiou’s Ethics and the Documentary Enterprise – Garnet Butchart
• Television and the Cognitive Distance From the Poor: Emmanuel Levinas’ Humanism of the Other: Reduction of the Self to the Other –Jae-Hong Kim
• Media Witnessing and Shared Humanity – Amit Pinchevski & Paul Frosh
• The Virtue (-Based) Ethics of Interruption – Piotr Szpunar

14:15-15:40 SESSION 6: Emerging Trends in Journalistic Ethics
• “Everyone’s A Journalist” – Or Are They? Exploring the Ethics of Communicative Practices by Citizen Media – Anne-Katrin Arnold& Lokman Tsui
• Journalism Ethics in Perspective: Desirability and Feasibility of a Separate Code of Conduct for Online Journalism – Christel van de Burgt, Klaus Schönbach and Richard van der Wurff
• Talking to/About Itself: Ethics and News Media Self-Coverage – Stephanie Craft
• The Possible Self-Defeating Quality of the Idea(l) of “The Average Citizen” – Gitte Meyer

15:30-16:15 SESSION 7: Market, Law, Politics
• Hatim El-Hibri – Ethics, Dangerous Media, and the Case of Fitna
• Tina Tomazic – Covert Advertising in the Context of Media Ethics
• Tai-li Wang – Challenge the Myth of Product Placements: The Impacts of Product Placements on News Credibility in TV News Programs
• Bruce A. Williams & Michael X. Delli Carpini – Real Ethical Concerns And Fake News: The Challenge of the New Media Environment

15:30-16:15 SESSION 8: Cosmopolitanism and the Global
• Universal Ethics: New Approaches, New Principles – Clifford G. Christians & Stephen J. A. Ward
• Discourse Ethics and Transcultural Deliberations Analytical Dimensions of “Pathologies of Communication” – Thomas Haeussler
• Global or “Glocal” Media Ethics? – Shakuntala Rao & Herman Wasserman
• Journalism for a World of Strangers: A Cosmopolitan Approach - Wendy N. Wyatt

16:45-17:00 Coffee Break

17:00-18:00 Closing Plenary: Daniel Dayan

Tale of a Celebrity Photo

2009-02-09T10:58:00.002Z

Sonia Livingstone argues that fans are the most active of audiences. From camping out for premieres to writing elaborate fanfiction to even getting jailed for stabbing the rivals of their idols (see Steffi Graf fan stabbing Monica Seles), fandom exhibits the color and diversity of the act of audiencing. It's cultural studies' weapon against conservative notions of media audiences as infantilized, disengaged and vulnerable dupes.

Let me present my own anecdote as part of our evidence.

Last Christmas, my mom and I were shopping for gifts for my brother at Topman in Rockwell when Jake Cuenca enters the store. My mom apparently is a big "fan" and tells me that she wants to say hi. I carry on rifling through their collection of plaid shirts as I say a silent prayer for her to keep her mouth shut. Jake Cuenca apparently wanted to check out the plaid shirts himself and walks toward us.

Dialogue begins.
Mom: "Hi, Jake."
Jake: (surprised) "Oh. Hi po. Merry Christmas!" (takes off his sunglasses)
Mom: "Merry Christmas, I'm Susan. I'm a fan."

Jake extends his hand for a polite greeting and says thank you. I'm also sure that Cougar! alarm bells started ringing in his head. But the real embarrassment is just about to begin.

Mom: "This is my son, Jon. Jon, this is Jake Cuenca. He's a star in ABS-CBN."
Jake: (turns to me) "Oh. Hi."
Jon: (turns red) "Hi. Yes ma, I know who he is."
Mom: "Huh? You know him?"
Jon: "Yes! I know OF him."
Mom: (turns to Jake) "Oh. He normally doesn't know local celebrities eh. I'm surprised he knows you."
Jake: "Ah ganun po ba?"
Mom: "Oo. Nasa UK kasi siya the past years."
Jon: "But I worked in GMA also. And back then, he was already the star of some of our shows."
Mom: (turns to Jake) "Huh? Nag-GMA ka ba?"
Jake: "Opo. Recent lang po ako sa ABS."
Mom: "Ah ganun ba? Can we have our photo taken?"
(Jake agrees)

Nanggulo na nga, nanginsulto pa. Indeed fans are the most unpredictable and embarrassing of audiences.

Can you say (Day)Dream Job?!

2009-02-05T09:14:00.001Z

Today I was forced to do bedrest by my doctor (After two days of toofrequent bathroom trips, my test results say it's e coli food poisoning. Eww. Was that oversharing?).

Now, I'm not really used to doing nothing. In fact, my doctor even joked that I still attend an important party as it might be a better cure for chatty old me than being cooped up alone. But anyway, what I did to spend the afternoon was download a bunch of Anderson Cooper 360 video podcasts.

Among my recent faves were of course his interview with Barack Obama and a fun segment with his lightsmen dancing to Beyonce's "Single Ladies" (to Anderson's trademark snickering and half-meant tsk-tsking). I superlove the show. I think it's relevant and fresh and critical. The "Keeping Them Honest" segment, where they verify a politician's statement or promise by digging up other sources, is bold and brash journalism. I like it so much that I have even sent submissions for his "Beat 360" challenge and "The Shot" just to get the AC360 t-shirt they flash on the show.

The show is also visually exciting. From the what of representation (those snazzy touch-screens!) to the who of representation (Andy's at his hunkiest when an annoying politician causes his brow to furrow), it totally delivers. AC360 is the poster program of what Martin Bell (1998) calls a journalism of attachment, and I hope we get our own equivalent in local tv.

Anyway, I got so into it that I Googled job openings on CNN and found these:
1. Producer, Anderson Cooper 360, New York. Minimum 5 years work experience in news television industry. Applicant must be editorially mature with solid knowledge of national and international news. Must have exceptional writing skills, and the drive and determination to create a visually exciting newscast.
2. Summer Interns, Anderson Cooper 360, Washington, DC. Unpaid. Student visas accepted. Internship Description: Anderson Cooper 360 does not shy away from strong opinions, provocative stories and challenging issues. Regular features include Anderson’s take on the world of media and the news, with in-depth coverage of justice, politics, health and pop culture, all from contributors who are as engaged, and engaging, as Anderson. March 26, 2009 deadline!

I'd totally apply, but I neither have 5 years news experience nor am I an undergrad! But my (day)dream remains to host a Media Conference with AC as plenary speaker! I'd plan it like couples plan weddings! Complete with photo booth, open bar, and waltz!

25 Random Things

2009-02-01T11:52:00.000Z

(Cross-posted from Facebook)

1. I look Chinese, my dad is Chinese, my titas are superChinese, but I can’t speak a word of Chinese. Not a word. And I feel bad when I have to apologize that I can’t speak Chinese, say, to a waiter or to a fellow student recruiting me to a Chinese society. We used to live in Fairview, and my parents couldn’t find a Chinese grade school that was nearby. So there.

2. From grade school to college, my friends’ and my fave pastime was listing teachers’ mispronunciations and grammar gaffes. My all-time fave: an English teacher’s insistence that the correct S-V agreement is “Some of the marbles IS on the table” because “some” is “collective” and therefore singular.

3. I was a perfect student in appearance only. I used to pay a fellow classmate to do my arts and crafts projects. And I’ve participated in various and ingenious kinds of “cooperative learning.”

4. I think I had my first boycrush in the 6th Grade. Heehee. But I had no memorable crushes in high school coz my classmates were kinda all nerdy with their Magic Cards.

5. My favorite word in the English dictionary is REPRESENTATION. In Tagalog, it’s gotta be CHIMAY, or chims.

6. As a student, I used to give tikoy (a Chinese New Year cake) to the teachers whom I thought may not give me an “A”. My friend Joey teased me mercilessly about this.

7. I took figure skating classes as a teen. And my coach said I was graceful and had good form.

8. I know gymnastics—its history, its stars, its politics, its judging system. I used to be part of a gymnastics tape trading club, and I have accumulated over 500 VHS tapes of gymnastics meets from the 70s to the 00s. I know the names of all the skills and can calculate routine start values.

9. A few years ago, I met this guy who was a former gymnast. And he took me to my first gymnastics class. I had a crush on him and wanted to impress him. The day ended with me crashing on the parallel bars and having two big bruises in my upper arms. I swear that was why we didn’t end up boyfriends.

10. During our Comm Roast, I won the Boy Abunda Award for biggest gossip.

11. I realize this list is becoming very gay.

12. Is it just me or are weddings and engagements bittersweet? I sometimes feel like I’m losing a friend when I see them get hitched.

13. My brother does not look like me. At all. I used to wonder whether I (or he) was adopted until I saw our birth certificates. But yeah, I know the Chinese can fake documents (cf Beijing gymnastics controversy).

14. I sometimes miss corporate life. I miss my cube, with the special furniture Tet picked out for me. I miss the people—way nicer than academics. And I miss seeing celebrities. Haha.

15. Yeah, I know she’s J, but I loved Angel Locsin. I still remember when I was introduced to her, and she was so nice and chatty. And I was superaffected when she moved to ABS.

16. To get my creatives team to work overtime, I used to buy them Bread Talk.

17. I was looking forward to working with Roger Silverstone when he died three months before I arrived at LSE.

18. I am fixated with tanning. My self-esteem is low when I’m pale. Curiously, I’ve developed my best tans in Europe than in Islands Philippines. Jet agrees with me that the sun is different there from here. There I am able to tan golden-brown as opposed to here when I burn and turn red-pink.

19. But no one has agreed with me yet that the sky is bluer in England than anywhere else in the world.

20. I think Montreal has the highest ratio of beautiful people per square meter than all the cities I’ve been to. I look forward to visiting again.

21. One of my proudest moments: My LSE classmate from Los Angeles was working on her dissertation on the Make Poverty History humanitarian ads. She needed someone to identify all the celebrities in the ad. And of all of us there, she picked the chinky-eyed Filipino to help her with this entertainment-geek task.

22. One of my most shameful moments: My UK supervisors were here in the Philippines. And taking a break from our fieldwork in Los Banos, we stopped to buy fruit from a fruit stand along the highway. Mirca pointed to a citrus-y fruit and asked me what it was. I said that it was calamansi, and Danny corrected me and said that it was a dalandan. I also failed to identify a chico and didn’t know what a mangosteen was.

23. Mirca asked me what I knew about Siargao as well, and I said, “Isn’t that up north?”

24. They also asked me when EDSA was built, what a yema ball is made of, why all cabs are tuned to Energy FM, why Filipinos like old songs, whether I’ve flown on chartered plane (“the best way to see the islands!”), what the choi in “kung hei fat choi” and Choi Garden means, etc. And with how I answered (or not), they now know I’m a ditzy geek.

25. I think hospitality is the most important virtue of all. More than honesty or justice or courage or even wisdom. In all that I do, with all the people I meet, I try to be as welcoming and open and caring as I can be. And I’d like to think I host dinners and parties and events pretty well

All's Well that Ends Well

2009-01-21T11:29:00.002Z

It's a bit late to post the requisite self-congratulatory recap of what I thought was a fun and informative Boundaries and Belongings conference. But, indulge me, if anything, this scene alone is worth memorializing:

Wide-Eyed Sophomores Flocking Mirca

You could always find things to improve on, but I knew it was ALL worth it when one student told me afterwards, "Thanks for making us experience how a conference is like abroad." Yes folks, academic life--debate, dialogue, discourse--can be extremely fun!

Thanks to all those who attended! Thanks to all those who practiced infinite hospitality and proper distance to our guests. Fight the good fight for media literacy!

Ateneo Comm Conference: Come One, Come All!

2009-01-07T11:06:00.002Z

This one-day conference aims to bring together scholars and students to explore the centrality of the media in the social, cultural, and ethical aspects of transnational life. Featuring plenary lectures from Mirca Madianou (Sociology, University of Cambridge) and Daniel Miller (Anthropology, University College London) and paper presentations from Ateneo Comm scholars, Boundaries & Belongings promises to open up a space to discuss how the increased mobility of peoples in a globalizing world raise significant new questions relating to:

* Identity: Negotiating self and other in spaces of difference
* Citizenship: Political engagement of diasporic communities
* Media and Communications: Centrality of media and communications in processes of social inclusion and exclusion

Admission is FREE!
Cocktails will be served.
Students and scholars from all departments are invited!

See you there! =)

---
Jon's Note:
This is a chance for individuals interested in media and communications to come together and candidly discuss something supremely relevant to our lives today: how much of our lives are affected by what happens elsewhere? How is the nature of love, care, lust, and also hate and indifference, transformed by new technologies? Where do our dreams, desires, and loyalties lie in an age of altogetherness and allatonceness?

* Comm majors: This is our chance to come together as a CommUnity! We've got Madianou (Contested Communicative Spaces: Turks in Greece) and Miller (Young and the Restless in Trinidad) speaking--people you've read in ComRes and MAG and Com100 and Audiences! And you have a chance to grill some of your own teachers as they present their work-in-progress papers. (To the Comm majors who feel that their course is fluffy and unimportant and un-cerebral compared to the other courses, here's your chance to see how important and critical our discipline is to our understanding of modern society! Treat this as your PABAON, especially for the seniors about to graduate!)

* Comm alumni: It's reunion time! See your friends, frenemies and teachers and how they've aged (or not). But seriously, it's one Saturday of brainfood AND good fun! It's no Comm event if there's not a lot of gossip to be traded! Come on, people! Go na!!!

* Industry Professionals and Scholars: A chance to exchange ideas across our own disciplinary borders! As academics, we'd love to hear different perspectives to the things that we study. Please email me at jo296@cam.ac.uk if you wish to reserve a lunch spot (subject to availability).

New Communications for the New Year

2009-01-03T15:30:00.002Z

The tragedy of my new year started on NYE when I lost my cell phone. For the second time this year.

Last photo of my N95, minutes before it was stolen, Vancouver, February 2008

Last photo of my Nokia 6120, a week before it vanished, Manila, December 2008

While the first one was particularly depressing because my contacts then was a collection of everyone I knew from my pre-academe days, this second one was tragic because I knew I would be missing out on the many witty/thoughtful/romantic (though mostly unoriginal) messages to be disseminated by friends and the like when the new year rings in. I wouldn't get a replacement SIM until the evening of Jan2, so there was no way I could retrieve the new year messages and reply. Surely, any believer of Silverstonian hospitality in mediated communications would deem my network management supremely irresponsible and unethical, I thought.

But then, as an academic, we're asked to be reflexive about our experiences, right? Rather than chalk up the experience down to my long list of 2008 disasters (alongside my dengue fever, a canceled Barcelona trip, Ateneo office politics, my dwindling allowance as a result of the pound-to-peso exchange rate, my aimless research, more office politics, Papa's illness), I thought about what it could all mean for my 2009.

So with a healthy bout of self-reflection and other forms of divination (i.e., consulting www.astrologyzone.com), I thought that my losing the phone was sending me a message about my communication philosophy for the new year.

Looking back, my 2008 introduced me to a whole lot of nice people. The year allowed me to make new friends, meet academic idols, go on quite a few memorable dates even, meet wonderful bright-eyed new students.

Best Tour Guide: Ethan in Montreal

Best and Priciest and Longest Lunch: Neeks/Nenita/Clinton/Lulu/Me at Gordon Ramsay's, Claridge's

Best Stealth Photography (academic division): Anna and Me with Sandra Jovchelovitch

Best Stealth Photography (Greek god division): The winning Adonises of Athens

Best Travel Partner/Jewelry Haggler/Santorini Hiker: Nenita

Best Buy: Gladiator Sandals from Athens, for equivalent Php1200

Best Pinoy Moment in Cambridge: Posing with (Crying) Baby Liam at the Corpus Great Hall

Best Academic Bigwig (and Longest Facebook Thread): Leloy and Me with Benedict Anderson

Best Field Trip: Com100 kids and MAG2.0 kid (!) in GMA TrackTrip

Best Papparazi Moment: "Save Media Studies, Save the World!" with Jeula and Jech

Best Fake Couple Shot (Runner-up): Neeks and Jon

Best Fake Couple Shot (Winner): Trixie and Jon

I went from being Ms Congeniality (Paul-Plazo 2007) to being Ms Hospitality (Cabanes 2008).

But it was also a very weird year in that I also experienced being Other, capital O, in many occasions that truly rocked me, tested me, frustrated me... To the point that I had different friends at different times prescribing me various pills, mood-enhancers, and sleeping aids to cheer me back to my old spirited self. It was a year when I had friends teaching meek old me how to "fight back" and how "not to care"--words that the Jon who grew up in a Disneyfied world was uneasy with. It was a year when I learned what frenemies truly were and how painful it was to always be guarded around certain people.

So, while I will certainly miss my nice phone and the few hundred contacts I had there, I will certainly not miss them all those contacts. In the coming year, I really should practice what I preach and value not the quantity of connection, but the quality of connection. Not friends in their multiplicity, but friends in their particularity. And, with all due respect to John Durham Peters, I think this year I would go for dialogue over dissemination. Discretion and communion with few over indiscriminate communication to all. Perhaps, hospitality not in its infinity, but hospitality always tempered with justice. And, maybe, cosmopolitanism--openness to others--but possibly of a more cautious and judicious kind.

As a media/communications ethics scholar, I often get swept away by the grand exhortations of philosophers conceiving of spheres, polises, and utopias "where nothing is misunderstood, hearts are open, and expression is uninhibited" (Peters 1999). But perhaps, coming from a year of tragicomic misunderstandings and double-barreled/double-meaninged/double-entendred/double-doubled sayings and saids, I would need a humbler, more moderate ethic of communication that in itself is not "too much" or "too little", but a more "proper" command, a proper obligation, a proper expectation.

Instead of Silverstone's fixation of distance in a horizontal plane (with his "too close" and "too far"), the more apt orientation here is seeing ethics in the vertical, and finding also the "proper distance" in terms of the "height" of expectations that we should have on ourselves and others when dealing with our others.

So happy new year to you all. May you find proper distance--both in its horizontal and vertical articulations--in your communications with others throughout the year!

Professor Obama -- NYTimes Article

2008-11-08T01:04:00.001Z

The Long Run "As a Professor, Obama Enthralled Students and Puzzled Faculty"

Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart

by Jodi Kantor
New York Times Online

CHICAGO — The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.

At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.

Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between an elite law school and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois Senate.

Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality — whether Americans will elect a black president — he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status.

Standing in his favorite classroom in the austere main building, sharp-witted students looming above him, Mr. Obama refined his public speaking style, his debating abilities, his beliefs.

“He tested his ideas in classrooms,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a colleague. Every seminar hour brought a new round of, “Is affirmative action justified? Under what circumstances?” as Mr. Hutchinson put it.

But Mr. Obama’s years at the law school are also another chapter — see United States Senate, c. 2006 — in which he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself. Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was well liked at the law school, yet he was always slightly apart from it, leaving some colleagues feeling a little cheated that he did not fully engage. The Chicago faculty is more rightward-leaning than that of other top law schools, but if teaching alongside some of the most formidable conservative minds in the country had any impact on Mr. Obama, no one can quite point to it.

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”

Mr. Obama had other business on his mind, embarking on five political races during his 12 years at the school. Teaching gave him satisfaction, along with a perch and a paycheck, but he was impatient with academic debates over “whether to drop a footnote or not drop a footnote,” said Abner J. Mikva, a mentor whose own career has spanned Congress, the federal bench and the same law school.

Douglas Baird, another colleague, remembers once asking Mr. Obama to assess potential candidates for governor.

“First of all, I’m not running for governor, “ Mr. Obama told him. “But if I did, I would expect you to support me.”

He was a third-year state senator at the time.

Popular and Enigmatic

Mr. Obama arrived at the law school in 1991 thanks to Michael W. McConnell, a conservative scholar who is now a federal appellate judge. As president of The Harvard Law Review, Mr. Obama had impressed Mr. McConnell with editing suggestions on an article; on little more than that, the law school gave him a fellowship, which amounted to an office and a computer, which he used to write his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”

The school had almost no black faculty members, a special embarrassment given its location on the South Side. Its sleek halls bordered a neighborhood crumbling with poverty and neglect. In his 2000 Congressional primary race, Representative Bobby L. Rush, a former Black Panther running for re-election, used Mr. Obama’s ties to the school to label him an egghead and an elitist.

At the school, Mr. Obama taught three courses, ascending to senior lecturer, a title otherwise carried only by a few federal judges. His most traditional course was in the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law. His voting rights class traced the evolution of election law, from the disenfranchisement of blacks to contemporary debates over districting and campaign finance. Mr. Obama was so interested in the subject that he helped Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University, develop a leading casebook in the field.

His most original course, a historical and political seminar as much as a legal one, was on racism and law. Mr. Obama improvised his own textbook, including classic cases like Brown v. Board of Education, and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as conservative thinkers like Robert H. Bork.

Mr. Obama was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say. He assigned a 1919 catalog of lynching victims, including some who were first raped or stripped of their ears and fingers, others who were pregnant or lynched with their children, and some whose charred bodies were sold off, bone fragment by bone fragment, to gawkers.

“Are there legal remedies that alleviate not just existing racism, but racism from the past?” Adam Gross, now a public interest lawyer in Chicago, wrote in his class notes in April 1994.

For all the weighty material, Mr. Obama had a disarming touch. He did not belittle students; instead he drew them out, restating and polishing halting answers, students recall. In one class on race, he imitated the way clueless white people talked. “Why are your friends at the housing projects shooting each other?” he asked in a mock-innocent voice.

A favorite theme, said Salil Mehra, now a law professor at Temple University, were the values and cultural touchstones that Americans share. Mr. Obama’s case in point: his wife, Michelle, a black woman, loved “The Brady Bunch” so much that she could identify every episode by its opening shots.

As his reputation for frank, exciting discussion spread, enrollment in his classes swelled. Most scores on his teaching evaluations were positive to superlative. Some students started referring to themselves as his groupies. (Mr. Obama, in turn, could play the star. In what even some fans saw as self-absorption, Mr. Obama’s hypothetical cases occasionally featured himself. “Take Barack Obama, there’s a good-looking guy,” he would introduce a twisty legal case.)

Challenging Assumptions

Liberals flocked to his classes, seeking refuge. After all, the professor was a progressive politician who backed child care subsidies and laws against racial profiling, and in a 1996 interview with the school newspaper sounded skeptical of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to reach across the aisle.

“On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection,” Mr. Obama said.

But the liberal students did not necessarily find reassurance. “For people who thought they were getting a doctrinal, rah-rah experience, it wasn’t that kind of class,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a former student who now teaches law at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

For one thing, Mr. Obama’s courses chronicled the failure of liberal policies and court-led efforts at social change: the Reconstruction-era amendments that were rendered meaningless by a century of resistance, the way the triumph of Brown gave way to fights over busing, the voting rights laws that crowded blacks into as few districts as possible. He was wary of noble theories, students say; instead, they call Mr. Obama a contextualist, willing to look past legal niceties to get results.

For another, Mr. Obama liked to provoke. He wanted his charges to try arguing that life was better under segregation, that black people were better athletes than white ones.

“I remember thinking, ‘You’re offending my liberal instincts,’ ” Mary Ellen Callahan, now a privacy lawyer in Washington, recalled.

In his voting rights course, Mr. Obama taught Lani Guinier’s proposals for structuring elections differently to increase minority representation. Opponents attacked those suggestions when Ms. Guinier was nominated as assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993, costing her the post.

“I think he thought they were good and worth trying,” said David Franklin, who now teaches law at DePaul University in Chicago.

But whether out of professorial reserve or budding political caution, Mr. Obama would not say so directly. “He surfaced all the competing points of view on Guinier’s proposals with total neutrality and equanimity,” Mr. Franklin said. “He just let the class debate the merits of them back and forth.”

While students appreciated Mr. Obama’s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand. When two fellow faculty members asked him to support a controversial antigang measure, allowing the Chicago police to disperse and eventually arrest loiterers who had no clear reason to gather, Mr. Obama discussed the issue with unusual thoughtfulness, they say, but gave little sign of who should prevail — the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the measure, or the community groups that supported it out of concern about crime.

“He just observed it with a kind of interest,” said Daniel Kahan, now a professor at Yale.

Nor could his views be gleaned from scholarship; Mr. Obama has never published any. He was too busy, but also, Mr. Epstein believes, he was unwilling to put his name to anything that could haunt him politically, as Ms. Guinier’s writings had hurt her. “He figured out, you lay low,” Mr. Epstein said.

The Chicago law faculty is full of intellectually fiery friendships that burn across ideological lines. Three times a week, professors do combat over lunch at a special round table in the university’s faculty club, and they share and defend their research in workshop discussions. Mr. Obama rarely attended, even when he was in town.

“I’m not sure he was close to anyone,” Mr. Hutchinson said, except for a few liberal constitutional law professors, like Cass Sunstein, now an occasional adviser to his campaign. Mr. Obama was working two other jobs, after all, in the State Senate and at a civil rights law firm.

Several colleagues say Mr. Obama was surely influenced by the ideas swirling around the law school campus: the prevailing market-friendliness, or economic analysis of the impact of laws. But none could say how. “I’m not sure we changed him,” Mr. Baird said.

Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama “doesn’t have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from,” Mr. Epstein said. “He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues.”

Leaving the Classroom

As Mr. Obama built his political career, his so-called groupies became an early core of supporters, handing out leaflets and hosting fund-raisers in their modest apartments.

“Maybe we charged an audacious $20?” said Jesse Ruiz, now a corporate lawyer in Chicago. Mr. Obama was sheepish asking for even that, Mr. Ruiz recalls. With no staff, Mr. Obama would come by the day after a fund-raiser to stuff the proceeds into a backpack.

Mr. Obama never mentioned his humiliating, hopeless campaign against Mr. Rush in class (he lost by a two-to-one margin), though colleagues noticed that he seemed exhausted and was smoking more than usual.

Soon after, the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for Michelle Obama directing the legal clinic.

Your political career is dead, Daniel Fischel, then the dean, said he told Mr. Obama, gently. Mr. Obama turned the offer down. Two years later, he decided to run for the Senate. He canceled his course load and has not taught since.

Now, watching the news, it is dawning on Mr. Obama’s former students that he was mining material for his political future even as he taught them.

Byron Rodriguez, a real estate lawyer in San Francisco, recalls his professor’s admiration for the soaring but plainspoken speeches of Frederick Douglass.

“No one speaks this way anymore,” Mr. Obama told his class, wondering aloud what had happened to the art of political oratory. In particular, Mr. Obama admired Douglass’s use of a collective voice that embraced black and white concerns, one that Mr. Obama has now adopted himself.

In class, Mr. Obama sounded many of the same themes he does on the campaign trail, Ms. Callahan said, ticking them off: “self-determinism as opposed to paternalism, strength in numbers, his concept of community development.”

But as a professor, students say, Mr. Obama was in the business of complication, showing that even the best-reasoned rules have unintended consequences, that competing legal interests cannot always be resolved, that a rule that promotes justice in one case can be unfair in the next.

So even some former students who are thrilled at Mr. Obama’s success wince when they hear him speaking like the politician he has so fully become.

“When you hear him talking about issues, it’s at a level so much simpler than the one he’s capable of,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He was a lot more fun to listen to back then.”

Election Fever: The Obama-Jon Connection

2008-11-05T14:09:00.001Z

At a time of economic recession and social/cultural/religious polarization and demonization, Barack Obama's landslide victory is an eloquent signifier of peoples' longings for a more positive politics. A politics of change, reconciliation, and inspiration hoped for not just by Americans but really by citizens the world over. How can anyone resist Obama fever? Yes, we can! GOBAMA!

More than his excellent campaign strategists (credited for running a smooth, professional campaign from start to finish), I think Obama's historic win owes more to the hardcore Obama fans, who displayed levels of public participation previously unheard of. From Obama Girl's racy YouTube videos to Facebook fundraising groups to door-to-door campaign volunteers, Obama fans proved that change at the top can swell from bottom-up support.

As media scholar Sonia Livingstone has eloquently said before, fans are the most active of audiences. And Obama's win tonight should make us think through our assumptions of fans such as Trekkies or Potterphiles as mere geeks and see them also as potentially very creative and engaged citizens!

Speaking of elections... guess who got elected himself as Graduate Student Representative of the International Communication Association (ICA).

I seriously didn't think I had a chance as I was running against four other candidates. My personal statement sounded ditzy compared to the others, as I tried to be somewhat irreverent, thinking that grad students would want a "fun", "relatable" representative. Looking back, I think I patterned my campaign after Sarah Palin. And it worked!

I'm especially excited because my boss will be one of my idol media theorists, Cornel Sandvoss. Cornel is the Chair of the Popular Communication Division and the author of Fans: The Mirror of Consumption.

It also means that I get to go to Chicago for the ICA conference in May! Win! GObama! Go media studies! Go Pinas!

Hong Kong Holiday Entry 1

2008-10-28T11:26:00.002Z

One reason I majorly looked forward to my Hong Kong holiday was the chance to reunite with my LSE flatmate Phoebe. It was September 06 when we first met, and we instantly clicked because of our shared love for all kinds of food. And also because we discovered that we look good together in photos... might as well hang out together right?

First Gimmick with Flatmates: Borough Market, September 06 (NOTE: I was so thin then!)

A Hong Kong national who took her undergrad and postgrad studies in the UK, Phoebe gladly took us around her hometown. She brought us to Lantau Island for outlet shopping (they even had my fave Canadian store Roots, which apparently has factories in Taiwan).

Then we went to Discovery Bay for dinner. Discovery Bay has a Serendra-ish feel to it. It didn't feel like Hong Kong at all as it was so chill and peaceful, with a gentle seabreeze and, curiously, no neon lights lighting up the streets. Over Italian dinner, we got to see fireworks from nearby Disneyland as an added bonus.

On our last evening, Phoebe satisfied my craving for something exotic by bringing us to this traditional Chinese place (you know, the kind where people sitting in huge round tables talk loudly). We had mushrooms, prawns, scallops, pork knuckles, and some seaweed-looking dish. But the highlight has got to be the roast goose, which tastes almost exactly like duck, if a bit more tender.

Over dinner, real-Chinese Phoebe schooled fake-Chinese me to "proper" Chinese eating. As I got impatient that the fried rice hadn't arrived when all the meals had already been served, Phoebe explained that fried rice traditionally does come last: she explained that you typically only order fried rice if you're still not full from what you had intially ordered. What should come together with all the viands is plain rice, not fried rice. Another curious practice: I noticed that her left hand holds on to her soup spoon as her right hand holds her chopsticks: she positions the soup spoon to "catch" whatever might fall from her chopsticks or her mouth as she chews her goose, veggies, etc.

She then took me to her friend's birthday party in this (straight) bar at Causeway Bay. I don't know if it's a function of its straight-ness or its Hong Kong-ness or its Chinese-ness, but I found it super-cutesy rather than pa-cool compared to the bars that I know here in Manila: there's karaoke screens all around and cool neon lighting. And the crowd has a kawaii feel to them too.

Birthday Boy Kevin (middle) is my crushie

Drinking Game Action

Blending in with the Locals, though with On not Speaking Chinese drama

Each table has a few sets of dice and shakers for brainy drinking games, like "Lucky" or "Liar".

In the latter, you try to call your opponents' bluff as you try to top each other's bets as to the number of same-digit dice everyone has on the table. It's incredibly geeky and complicated that I ended up drinking more than anyone else. But curiously, the alcohol mix was prolly 80% juice and 20% vodka so I was able to navigate back to the hotel without making a single wrong turn.

Thanks for the hospitality, Phoebe! Next time, it's my turn to take you around!

The Geek Oscars: Top Universities 2008

2008-10-13T14:38:00.002+01:00

Life stops thrice a year for me: the Oscars in February, gymnastics world championships in the fall, and the yearly Times Top Universities unveiling. The Oscars is usually a high holiday of exuberant emotion, what with the weepy speeches and heavy-handed "in memoriam" fluff pieces (save for the occasional WTF moments, e.g., the Brokeback Mountain loss and the Halle "Storm" Berry Best Actress travesty). Gymnastics Worlds is more breathless, edge-of-your-seat action. I'd usually watch this online via live video streaming, with several other fans on YM--proving fans are indeed "the most active of audiences" with our creative commentary and our own keeping-it-honest judging.

And the Times Top Universities list unveiling is typically the most anticlimactic, unspectacular, and downright depressing of all these events. In past years, I've seen Ateneo get passed by La Salle, saw us fall from 200+ to 400+, thinking we might not even make the list AT ALL this year. But lo and behold, ye men of little faith, we've rebounded from 400+ to No. 254. This makes us the top school in the Philippines, ahead of the University of the Philippines for the first time. Bravo! Or, Bravaaah!

I say this merits a bonfire, don't you think? But instead of burning wood with rival basketball players' names, I'd say it's better to sit and talk about burning some of our High Inquisitor Educational Decrees that are just not working. Instead of patting ourselves on our backs and releasing variously worded press releases about this good news, we should reflect about what else we could improve on. Like, encouraging faculty to get published in international journals (DLSU pays 50K for each and every journal article released while our own Dr V admits to getting zilch for a recent work), sending faculty and students to international academic conferences to present their work (ADMU's subsidy barely covers airfare, what more accommodation and living allowance), encouraging better research for our undergrads and grads (why not have full-year theses for Comm students instead of half-assed one-sem theses on an 18-unit load?) and encouraging inter-and intra-department exchange of ideas as well as greater academic/corporate/government tie-ups (to provoke debate and, simply, to matter in real world issues). We have much more to do, people!

Unlike my original alma mater, my other unis face bad news with the new rankings. Cambridge Uni dropped from number 2 to number 3 this year, getting edged out by Yale. And LSE, from its top 20 position three years ago, dropped all the way to number 66 this year. (Jason half-jokingly attributes this to Roger Silverstone's untimely death) Whatever the case, Lilie Chouliaraki (the new chair) better pick up the pieces and recruit more big names (and promising scholars) for media@lse! Hint, hint! :)

Anyway, here's a toast to the top universities. Hurray for academia!

Student Review of My ComTheory Class

2008-10-11T07:09:00.000+01:00

This is hilarious! I got this from the ComTech blog Comtech-niques, which provides teacher reviews and exam reviewers for ComTech students. I'm generally okay with the review, though iffy with its overemphasis on grades, bonus points and level of difficulty.

-------

Subject: Com 11: Introduction to Communication and Communication Theory

General Advice: Be responsible with your readings and simply take down important notes during class. The quizzes are basically the handouts. Papers, on the other hand, would require a bit more effort to ensure a high mark. Projects are, well, projects that need to be capitalized on. Though in short, the challenge is indeed manageable.

Teaching Style: Sir Jon’s discussion involves a lot of intellectual conversations that sometimes has its “own language.” But that should not discourage the student to participate because one will definitely pick up a thing or two within class time. He’s just a great example of academic diplomacy and that’s what he encourages his students to do. The lessons won’t buzzkill thy brain if one reads ahead of time.

Don’t worry about hell weeks and Accounting exams. Sir’s very understanding and usually he’ll give the day off so you guys can prepare for those other requirements.

Technologically well-informed so Powerpoints (Keynote) are his status-quo with a dash of videos here and there. Media & Morality talks can also be expected during the course of the sem (that have the possibility of bonus points).

Requirements Level: Steady (or simply ‘just right’)

Study Habits: Do exert extra effort in projects and papers mainly because they do take huge chunks of your grade. As I said earlier, responsible reading is the way to go. Readings are part of oral exams, papers, etc. so use it to your advantage.

A-able Factor (1-Easiest, 5- Hardest): 1 if you follow the guidelines, 2 if you don’t

Art, Architecture and the Future: Cambridge's New Clock

2008-09-21T15:17:00.001+01:00

In his book The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton explains our eternal fascination with shaping our surroundings. He says, "The very principle of... architecture has its origins in the notion that where we are critically determines what we are able to believe in." Houses, buildings, cathedrals, parks--as well as the objects that we use to decorate them--carry values and meanings about what we believe (or should believe) to be true, he asserts.

Corpus Christi Chapel

In my Cambridge house, Corpus Christi College, the key values that I take away are truth, order, and knowledge. With its towering spires and signature symmetry, Corpus' Gothic architecture invokes awe and admiration. And, walking around the New Court, built in the 1500s and completed in 1827, I don't find it difficult to get into geek mode. Quite simply, the regime of perfection imposed by the castle motif and stained glass images of the divine inspire one to summon the spirits of Cambridge scholars past--from Darwin to Newton, from Milton to Wittgenstein. Their alphanumerical formulae, philophical treatise, and imaginative prose all speak of their communion with truth after all, and the unforgiving perfection of these surroundings invite, if not demand, me to discover my own truths.

Corpus Christi New Court

At the same time, I do acknowledge that perfection possesses a dual economy of hope and despair. As much as perfect creations can illuminate and inspire, they can also expose human finitude, indeed our fragility, dependence, and transience in the world.

Corpus Christi Great Hall

That's why I got excited about the news that Corpus Christi has installed a brand new clock outside our library. Just this week, A Brief History of Time's Stephen Hawking came to Corpus to unveil the "chronophage" (literally, time eater), a sinister representation of time that is meant to remind students that we are always one second closer to our death.

Stephen Hawking Unveiling the Corpus Clock

The clock's inventor John Taylor explains: ""It is terrifying, it is meant to be... Basically I view time as not on your side. He'll eat up every minute of your life, and as soon as one has gone he's salivating for the next. It's not a bad thing to remind students of. I never felt like this until I woke up on my 70th birthday, and was stricken at the thought of how much I still wanted to do, and how little time remained."

The clock, priced at $1.8 million, is made iconic with the image of a demonic grasshopper. See the hypnotic clock in motion HERE. And the news article from The Guardian HERE.

It's morbid and profound. And makes you feel inadequate. Very, very Cambridge, I must say.

Save Media Studies, Save the World!

2008-09-16T02:34:00.001+01:00

Traditional discussion of media ethics is usually confined with legal case studies, codes of ethics, and stiff admonitions of sex and violence in the media. This course then is not about these little ethics but about morality—that is, the consequences of media consumption and production to the very meaning of our humanity. Media & Morality asserts that our everyday choices with the media—from poking, friending, and flaming online to taking photos of tourist destinations to watching foreign-language films—reflect how we see, hear, and touch distant others and how we ultimately regard ourselves.

Some of the questions we ask include: How social are social networking sites? Are Facebook users narcissistic poseurs or can they also be self-aware beings-with-others? What is emo-journalism and how can it contribute to identifying with distant others? How well did The Guidon report on the Ateneo suicides? In using the words “suicide incident” over “tragedy”, what moral claim did they make about the living and the dead? When is a joke only a joke? What can we learn about Teri Hatcher’s and Malu Fernandez’s “jokes” about OFWs and their fiery aftermath? What charity ads encourage donation—those that invoke happy thoughts or those that invoke shame and guilt?

As a brand new elective, M&M is ideal for pop culture aficionados and aspiring media producers. It encourages creative work, as students will participate in a) designing humanitarian campaigns and presenting them to advertising professionals, b) pitching other-oriented documentary and telenovela story concepts to GMA executives, and c) organizing a media studies conference headlined by a Cambridge professor. This course is taught by Jonathan C. Ong, creator of the MediaTalk@admu series, former advertising and broadcasting executive, and firm believer that the media is at the heart of our moral future.

Cambridge Uni on TV Soaps?

2008-09-03T09:09:00.001+01:00

Orientals Arrive

Below is a thoroughly fascinating article about my dear 800-year-old Cambridge Uni and its wish to repackage itself in the media. In line with its efforts to be more inclusive of students from different social classes, ethnicities, etc., Cambridge spoke with British soap opera producers about possibly showing a different side to the school. Traditionally known for its stiff upper lip and its "elite" "white" image, Cambridge is revamping its representations--both the WHO and the WHAT--in the media and in its own admissions policy.

Spot the Asians

Check out the article below!

In light of this, I had an idea for a soap called "Maid in Magdalene" about a Filipina maid named Magdalena who falls for a bloke in Magdalene (pronounced maud-lin) College Cambridge. I think it's gloriously mass-market but Ayee thinks it's depressingly stereotypical.

Magdalena's Token Gay Sidekick

What I'd want to pitch though is a reality show that's like an academic Amazing Race. It would be supervisor/supervisee (Mirca and I would be the most photogenic team), and the challenges would be: a) go around the cemetery in North London and spot as many tombstones of dead theorists, b) a roadblock head-to-head battle of on-the-spot lit review writing, and c) a PUNT-IT or SHELF-IT detour.

My Fave Punter Adam

I can already hear Phil: "In Punt-it, the supervisor has to punt a boat back and forth in the River Cam without hiring the resident hunky punter. In the slim chance that the supervisor is physically fit, this task can be accomplished in around 50 minutes. In Shelf-it, the supervisee has to rearrange 100 books according to their accession numbers. The twist: the accession label stickers have been removed from the books so it is up to the student's knowledge of the library's ancient system of classification that will get them through the challenge."

Bookworm Forever

Now won't that be fun?

======

Cambridge University wants to be on TV soaps
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Tue Sep 2, 4:49 PM ET

LONDON - Britain's soap operas offer a steady diet of sex, scandal — and if Cambridge University has its way, scholarship.

Trying to shed its elitist image, Cambridge has approached the producers of Britain's three leading TV soaps about including it in their story lines.

Spokesman Greg Hayman said the idea was part of a bid to correct the perception that Cambridge was "not for young people from ordinary backgrounds."

"We're very keen to attract the brightest and best students regardless of their background," Hayman said Tuesday. "One of the better ways of communicating directly with potential students is to talk to them through the soaps and other programs they watch."

Like almost all British universities, Cambridge and its rival Oxford are government-funded, and under pressure to become more inclusive. The government wants half of all young people to attend college by 2010, which means universities need to target all economic backgrounds.

What better way than through the travails of characters on "EastEnders," "Coronation Street" and "Emmerdale" — set respectively, in a gritty London neighborhood, a scruffy Manchester district and a farming village.

In some ways Oxford and Cambridge — elegant, affluent universities known collectively as "Oxbridge" — resemble U.S. Ivy League schools, which have long tried to attract minority and less well-off students through scholarships and outreach programs. Several elite U.S. colleges, including Harvard and Yale, have set family income thresholds below which students pay no tuition — $45,000 at Yale and $60,000 at Harvard for students entering this fall.

"Yale is eager to have as much diversity as possible, and that includes socio-economic diversity," said spokeswoman Gila Reinstein. More than 40 percent of Yale's students now get financial aid and the number is steadily rising — evidence of more students from less well-off backgrounds.

But Harvard and Yale don't occupy quite the same central social perch as Oxbridge, whose graduates account for 78 percent of Britain's High Court judges, 42 percent of its top politicians and 56 percent of its senior journalists, according to education charity the Sutton Trust.

And while 90 percent of British students attend state high schools, Oxford and a Cambridge draw only about half their student body from there.

Many in Britain's poorer neighborhoods still view attending Oxford or Cambridge as an impossible dream.

"The money definitely puts me off," said Matt Ryan, a 16-year-old who attends a state high school in Hampshire in southern England and hopes to study engineering at Cambridge. "I think a lot of people are put off because Oxford and Cambridge are the best of the best. But if any old person could get in, there'd be no point."

The elitist image is unfair, according to university officials.

University administrators point out that Oxford and Cambridge are not more expensive than less-esteemed universities, because tuition fees are capped by law at about $5,350 per year. Ethnic minority students are not underrepresented — they make up 16 percent of the student body at Cambridge, and 13 percent at Oxford, a slightly larger proportion than in society as a whole.

"There's a perception gap between reality and how we've been perceived previously and that takes time to change," Hayman said.

The stone buildings and elegant spires of Oxbridge have provided the backdrop for many films and TV shows, from historical drama "Chariots of Fire," set in Cambridge, to Oxford-based detective series "Inspector Morse."

Cambridge is hoping for something a little more contemporary from its latest initiative.

Hayman said so far there have been no firm commitments from TV producers, although one crew was planning an exploratory visit to Cambridge.

But he is pleased by a current story line in "EastEnders" that has working-class teenagers Tamwar Masood and Libby Fox considering applying to Cambridge and Oxford, to the delight of their ambitious mothers.

"It's a very happy coincidence," Hayman said.

Oxford University said it had no plans to write to TV producers — but it, too, has been watching the soaps.

"I did speak to somebody at 'EastEnders' about our bursary scheme in case the story line was going to continue," said a spokeswoman on condition of anonymity in line with university policy. "We wanted to make sure they knew what kind of assistance might be available to someone like Libby."

"EastEnders" said the characters of Tamwar and Libby had another year of high school to complete and it was too early to say whether the Oxford-Cambridge plot would continue.

Cambridge, which celebrates its 800th birthday next year, has also approached sci-fi series "Doctor Who" about filming in the university's ancient colleges, and suggested the automotive show "Top Gear" recreate a 1958 stunt in which undergraduates hoisted a vintage Austin Seven van atop the university's Senate House.

Loving (and Loathing) Gymnastics

2008-08-22T14:18:00.003+01:00

I fell in love with gymnastics 12 years ago. Watching the Atlanta Olympics--the heroics of Kerri Strug landing on one leg to win the first team gold for the US, Dominique Dawes' infamous choke during the all-around, and Svetlana Khorkina's balletic 'Carmen' on floor exercise--I transfigured from casual viewer to hardcore fan. The drama, the glitter, the unforgiving once-every-four-years pressure, the politics, the quest for perfection: it was my very own reality tv (before 'reality tv').

Kerri Strug, 96 Olympic Champ

After Atlanta, I immediately joined an online gymnastics tape trading club and exchanged VHS tapes with friends from Kansas City to Paris. (I now have 600 tapes, with my oldest competition being Munich '72) I studied the Code of Points and can calculate start values for the women. I learned the sport's history and saw how much world politics is indeed inscribed in gymnastics (e.g., Protesting the Soviet Union's invasion of her country, Czech Vera Caslavska turned her head down on the medal stand while her Soviet rival Larissa Petrik's national anthem played in '68). I even developed a "country crush" on Romania from all the stories of how the small, Catholic, underdeveloped Eastern European nation pinned its hopes and dreams every four years on their young (also: abused, overtrained, and deeply talented) gymnasts, trying so hard to keep the legacy of Nadia Comaneci alive. And, yes, just a few years ago, well above the average gymnast age, I even tried to do it myself at the Rizal Sports Club. On my first day, I fell ON the parallel bars, coming home black-and-blue on my upper arms as I crashed on the bars attempting my dismount. And I loved the sport even more after that.

Me, at the Athens Ancient Olympic Stadium

Unlike sports such as tennis, gymnastics' one and only grand slam is the Summer Olympic Games. Even gymnastics' (now-)annual world championships get hardly any attention. Among gymnasts, the drama and mystique of the Olympics is indescribable. (Some of the most talented gymnasts fail to even make the Olympics due to injuries, choking, and politics. My fave example of politics is 1988 Seoul, where USSR left out their World Champion from the team just to prove a point how good they are to rival Romania.) And among gymnastics fans, the Olympics become huge 'media events' too.

'Ecstatic news' and 'high holidays', the Olympics are when I have heightened experiences of space-time. It's when I skip Friday gimmicks to go home early, stay up late to check updates, and assign our maid to human-TiVO duty. It's also when I get to share the sport that I love with many other casual viewers either a) enthralled with pointed toes and triple twists, or b) enraged by the twisted judging and cheating (?) that they see so rampant and blatant in the sport.

I for one am an apologist. Yes, the judging sucks. And yes, the death of the 10.0 system is inexcusable (fans and even Nadia Comaneci herself were against changing the system). Yes, there are falsified ages and backroom deals (Aussie judge to Russian judge: "I'll score you higher if you score mine higher"). And yes, there are whiny coaches who are less mature about losing than the kids 1/3 their age.

Marta Karolyi, bitchy US Women's Team Coordinator

But we love gymnastics because, occasionally, there comes a gymnast who reminds us of what the sport is really all about. Artistry, beauty, liquid grace. And power too. Grit, determination, inspiration.

In Beijing, we had the tightest women's all-around competition since Miller versus Gutsu 1992. For some reason, the all-arounds of 96, 00 and 04 were splatfests, with the best gymnasts making mistakes, with the merely-good-but-consistent ones winning. Thank goodness then for the beauty of Nastia Liukin, herself a throwback to Soviet-era elegance in an age when power and explosiveness is rewarded more. She is the most elegant Olympic champ in decades.

And, most significanty, we also had the best Chinese women's team in history win team gold for the first time. For years, Chinese women have always been compared to porcelain: "beautiful but breakable", reputed for their innovation and artistry as well as their being major headcases who choke under pressure. This year, we finally had their most complete squad compete, taking risks and looking near-perfect doing it. We've predicted it before: if China hits perfectly, they'd be unstoppable. Thank God, or thank Prod (!), they finally did.

Unfortunately, however, this had to be shadowed by allegations of age falsification. And this upsets me and many gym fans more than anything because it hits not only the credibility of the sport but also affects the stunningly talented gymnasts themselves.

crowd favorite Jiang Yuyuan

First, these gymnasts competed last year at the World Championships and were deemed eligible to compete THEN. How come protests over their ages were not lobbied last year? Is it because they merely won silver to the US last year? To have this IOC-sanctioned inquiry come at this time alerts one to who might be behind the move politically. The Beijing Games have been scrutinized more than any Olympics I have known in my lifetime (I was too young to remember the Soviet protest of 1984 Los Angeles), and of course to see China and its government shamed (whether it be by fake fireworks or dubbed singing girl or ineligible gymnasts) will no doubt please quite a few parties. One needs to do a cursory discourse analysis of news about the Beijing Olympics to see how much othering and essentialism and Orientalism there is.

Second, age falsification is nothing new to gymnastics. Outspoken US coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi are no strangers to this tactic when they were back in their native Romania. Post-Karolyi regime Romanians Daniela Silivas, Gina Gogean and Alexandra Marinescu all admitted to being underage in '88, '92, and '96 respectively, but they were never stripped off their titles. That is why I am especially curious what might the sanction be if ever the Chinese gymnasts are indeed proven underage.

Third, even if the Chinese gymnasts are proven to be underage, I don't think anyone will believe them anyway. The 'scandal' discourse has just completely taken over and have taken on the 'status of truth'. Counter-essentialist discourses about Chinese girls being naturally smaller than Caucasians and that the Americans are just being sourgrapes are no use.

I'm just sad because women's gymnastics did look amazing in this Olympics. Way better than it did in Athens 04. Too bad about all these allegations.

One more reason I love gymnastics? Umm, the men of course. To end on a happy note, let's end with my fave gym boys.

surprise bronze medalists US Men

High Bar medalists Fabian Hambuechen and Jonathan Horton getting tooclose

first-ever French all-around medalist Benoit Caranobe

commie-tastic Xiao Qin saluting China

Dutch high bar specialist (and nudie model) Epke Zonderland

Pretty and Published

2008-07-27T09:30:00.001+01:00

This piece of good news got me up from my bed(rest) today.

I must say that I'm still a bit baffled by the whole academic publishing exercise. This is a piece that I submitted to them way back in December. They gave me their review last May. And I submitted my revision two weeks ago. And now it's bound to be published for either end 2008 or early 2009. No wonder academics get a bad rap for being dinosaurs. And here I remember my friend Nenita commenting how in the three years that I'm supposed to finish ONE book for my PhD, she would have finished an equivalent of 300 projects.

Anyway, I consider this paper of mine very special. It's the first written piece that I accomplished at Cambridge. I think it's my best written piece ever (especially because I plagiarized the SilverstoneTM staccato sentences). And, if all goes well, this should serve as my chapter 2 in my PhD book. While it's not the piece that's dearest to me (that would be the awesomely titled 'Children Watching Children', currently being revised for Journal of Children and the Media), I think this is the one where I stretched myself most, as I had to survey the concept of cosmopolitanism in media and cultural studies as well as in anthropology, sociology, and moral philosophy. So without further ado, HERE for download is the pre-publication version of 'The Cosmopolitan Continuum: Locating Cosmopolitanism in Media and Cultural Studies'.

I am legally bound to say: “This paper has been accepted for publication in Media, Culture and Society and the final (edited, revised and typeset) version of this paper will be published by Sage Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. © Sage Publications Ltd, 2008.”

Anyway, I hope that this piece of news energizes me to get back up and running for this coming week. The past week, I've blown through two seasons of Popular, the Star Wars prequels, two seasons of 30 Rock, and one season of MTV's awesomely cool school paper reality drama The Paper.

While this week has served as somewhat of a breather from my insane sked this term, I can't wait to start being productive again. And throw that long-awaited wine and cheese party! This Gossip Geek is ready for his comeback.

Some Videos

2008-07-16T17:27:00.000+01:00

Because this blog awfully needs some action.

1. High School Musical 3

2. Gossip Girl Season 2

Happy Birthday, Roger Silverstone.

2008-06-15T09:06:00.001+01:00

15 June is the birthday of the "violent prophet" of media studies Roger Silverstone. Had he been alive today, he would have been 63 years old.

Roger has been my one true touchstone in my academic research and writing. I had applied to the LSE thinking that he would be my supevisor, only to find out that he passed away two months before I would arrive. Nevertheless, his powerful ideas on media and morality, everyday life, the other, enabling/disabling, inclusion/exclusion, and home/globe remain at the heart of my own work,. And it's also his epic writing style, staccato sentences, and "speaking in two voices" that I try to pay homage to in my own essay writing. And of course, in my teaching, my syllabus is pretty much book-ended with Roger's works, wishing that his critical voice disturbs students enough to "take the media seriously", as Roger himself put it in 1999's Why Study the Media?

To toast Roger, here are some of other media scholars' tributes to him:
John Durham Peters: "Roger Silverstone has done us a lasting service of teaching us how to see media not only as clotted vehicles of maya and mayhem, but also as pointers to a better world. He showed us what it is to wait for the messiah while making sure not to get stung one more time."

Kate Lacey: Roger's sense of hospitality was institutional. He made the departments and centres he founded into places where people were at home.

Shani Orgad: "For me, perhaps Roger's greatest legacy and my most vivid memories of him will be what he engaged on... throughout his life: conversation with colleagues and others, both mediated and unmediated, within the UK and beyond, in academia and beyond. Crucially, he always listened as well as spoke. It is the media's responsibility, Silverstone maintained, to provide a space that lets the other speak, and in which this voice can be heard."